Occasionally a user of a vehicle will schedule an appointment with a dealer. One reason to schedule an appointment with a dealer is because there is a problem with the vehicle. Another reason to schedule an appointment with a dealer is to have routine maintenance done on the vehicle (e.g., oil change or 30,000 mile service). One way of scheduling a service appointment is using an automated appointment system. The automated appointment system conveniently allows the user of the vehicle to schedule an appointment from the vehicle. When a user selects to schedule a service appointment with a dealer using the automated appointment system, the vehicle communicates with a remote appointment server to schedule a service appointment for the vehicle.
However, occasionally when the user selects to schedule a servicing appointment using the automated appointment system, the vehicle may not be able to communicate with the appointment server to schedule the appointment. The communication problem may occur, for example, if the vehicle is in a bad reception area (e.g., in an underground parking garage) or the appointment server is experiencing problems. Currently, if there are communication problems, the user has to make periodic appointment requests until the vehicle is able to communicate with the appointment server. However, the periodic appointment requests may distract the user from the core task of driving or may cause the user to become frustrated, especially if the communication problems continue for an extended period of time.
Thus, there is a need for a safe and user-friendly way of handling the situation where the vehicle is unable to communicate with the remote server to schedule or reschedule a vehicle service appointment with a dealer.